


You Come Here Often?

by MothTale



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bad Flirting, Clint Barton Feels, Drunkenness, F/M, POV Laura Barton, Robin Hood References, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-24 20:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20364991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MothTale/pseuds/MothTale
Summary: Laura is a bartender, Clint is one of her regulars.It goes from there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure: I am a Brit born in the mid 90's. I have never been to the type of bar described herein.
> 
> I came into the world of fanfiction as a wide-eyed slash fangirl, an unashamed fujoshi, a purveyor of boys love wherever I could find it...Over a decade on and here I am, writing about a canon heterosexual couple. Twelve year old me would be horrified.
> 
> Basically this is my take on a possible backstory for Clint and Laura - it was stuck in my head for a while and I decided to get some of it out. I'm not sure how many parts it'll be (at least two) or even if it'll have a proper conclusion (I don't write romance fiction a lot). Hope you enjoy it anyway!

She knew she should really put a stop to this - before somebody got hurt.

But Jack, her boss, had some pretty clear rules on interference. You had to let drunks do what drunks were gonna do - and most of the time what they were gonna do was stupid. The only instance in which she was allowed to interfere was in the case of serious damage to bar property. Serious was the key word, and Jack’s version of what ‘serious’ meant was a little different to her own.

Chairs, for example, smashed over the back of someone’s head were perfectly fine. The chair-smasher might end up owing Jack a favour, but he wasn’t going to get the cops called on him.

So Laura very much doubted that the incident which was unfolding in front of her, in which the only thing which stood to be damaged was a single man, or possibly a wall, fell into that category.

‘Let’s make this interesting. $500.’

‘Done. You sure you want to do this? I almost feel bad taking this money from you, man.’

Laura watched as the man the other regulars called ‘Robin’ - almost certainly _not_ his real name because every time he was called by it he got this smirk on his face, like it was part of some big inside joke - took a few more steps back and examined the dart in his hand.

That same smirk was there right now.

On the far side of the room was another one of the regulars, Dusty, they called him, holding an inflated condom over his head.

They hadn’t been able to find any apples or any real balloons.

Mick Lynch had been the instigator, betting that ‘Robin’ wouldn’t be able to hit an apple - as the object had been at the time of the proposed bet - off a guy’s head from ten feet.  
Robin had taken the bet.

Laura didn’t think he was drunk. To her knowledge he’d had two beers at most, and he was certainly one of the most sober of the group. So she had no idea how Mick had managed to goad him into this bet. The guy must really need the money, or else he just didn’t care.

By now pretty much everyone in the bar had turned to watch, excluding Old Flint, who was already too far gone to move.

No one had come up to the bar since they’d started moving tables to make space, so Laura was free to watch.

‘Last chance, Mick. We don’t have to do this.’

‘$600.’

‘Alright. Your loss.’

Robin shrugged. He looked at the dart again, and then he threw it.

The _pop_ echoed like a gunshot.

Old Flint’s head jerked up off the table with a snort.

‘So, looks like you owe $600 dollars, Mick.’

‘Naw, no way you made that-- Where’s the dart? It’s a trick, you got Dusty in on this and it’s a--’

‘Dart’s right there. In the wall. I can do it again if you want? You got another $600 you feel like losing?’

Mick grumbled before getting out his wallet and handed a few bills over to Robin. He mumbled something about getting the rest later. It seemed like he’d be having to get other people to pay for his drinks for a while.

Robin clapped him on the shoulder, still smirking.

He came up to the bar, and Laura pretended she’d been cleaning glasses the whole time. Definitely not watching him bursting a condom off another man’s head with a dart. Not at all.

‘I’m not gonna be able to pull that one in here for a while,’ he said, sighing. ‘Still, there’s other bars with other idiots. Mick have a tab going? Figure I better pay it - least I can do for the poor guy.’

Laura told him the amount.

‘I didn’t know you were so good at darts,’ she said, making conversation while she got his change. Most nights a game would get started and she’d never seen him play, he’d never seemed interested.

‘S’not darts. You should see me with a bow. I’m real good at that.’

Something clicked.

‘Robin Hood, right? That’s why you picked the name.’

For a moment he froze, and Laura thought she’d made a grave mistake. Said something she shouldn’t - revealed she _knew_ something she shouldn’t. And she was gonna regret it really soon. Possibly the moment she stepped outside at the end of her shift to walk to her car and he slipped up behind and grabbed her by the neck and…

‘Yeah, that’s right. Kinda a shit alias I know, but it was hard to resist. How’d you figure it was a fake name?’

_Well, you see it’s because I’ve spent an awful lot of time staring at your face these last few weeks…_

She couldn’t tell him that.

‘Just, you don’t look much like a Robin.’

He looked at her, right at her, for a moment. His eyes were the kind of blue that changed - she’d thought they were hazel as first, but they were blue.

_Crap, stop looking at his eyes_.

She felt her face heating up.

‘Fair enough,’ he said, shrugging, and breaking the stare. ‘The name’s Clint, by the way. The real one, that is.’

‘You’re not gonna have to kill me now I know that, right?’

He laughed.

He was c--(_don’t think the c-word Laura, don’t think the c-word_)--ute in a rough-around-the-edges kind of way.

‘Nah, you’ve been working here a while. I figure you know how to keep a secret by now. And you are…?’

‘Laura.’

‘Nice to meet you Laura. How come you’re working in this dump?’

‘Well the pay is pretty good, only place that pays better round here is the topless bar down the street.’

He didn’t miss a beat, still talking to her face and not her tits.

‘I can see why you’d prefer it here. You paying for college or something?’

‘Yeah. How’d _you_ guess that?’

Robin--no, Clint-- shrugged.

‘You seem smart is all.’

‘Thanks, I guess,’ Laura said.

She knew there had to be more to it than that.

Like maybe he had been watching her too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is next chapter I already had written - there's no more at the moment but I might go back to this. I have a couple of ideas for episodes, but they'd have to take place later on and I'd need a couple of chapters to bridge the gap.

Unlike some of the other guys Clint didn’t have a routine - there wasn’t a day he was guaranteed to be there, a time he always came in at.

It was almost a month before she saw him again.

The moment he walked in the door she felt it.

_Oh heck_.

Butterflies in her stomach, and a warm tingle beneath that. This was bad.

She should just sleep with him.

That’d solve the problem. She was pretty sure he was attracted to her too, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to arrange.

She’d ask him when her shift was almost over, invite him back to her place--

\--and then she’d be doing the kind of things her mother warned her about. Going home with strange men, thinking with her cooch and not her head.

She didn’t know anything about him.

The only thing she really knew was that his name was Clint and he had great aim - the story of the dart and the condom had been circulated around the bar several times since his last appearance. In one version ‘Robin’ had thrown the dart without looking. In another he’d done it upside down.

Whenever Laura got asked for confirmation of the story she’d just smile and nod.

So the moment Clint walked in he was accosted by a couple of guys wanted to see the dart trick.

Someone actually had an apple this time, so they used that. One of the regulars who had been there that night volunteered to stand with it on his head.

Clint looked almost bored as he threw the dart. It hit the apple dead centre.

Laura had to go serve someone, so she missed the start of the argument. She picked up the gist though.

The guys had wanted to see a different trick - the one which had been talked about. They weren’t gonna pay up.

Laura expected a fight - they weren’t exactly a rare thing in this bar. She knew the drill, stay out of it and don’t call the cops unless someone’s dying or someone tries to set fire to the place.

Calmly, Clint walked up to the dartboard and pulled out several more darts.

‘What do you want me to hit?’ he said.

When no answer was forthcoming he pointed at the noticeboard by the door.

‘How about that flyer? Bet I can land a dart on any ‘o’.’

Without waiting for the men to speak, he threw the dart.

Laura couldn’t see it clearly, but she went and looked at the flyer afterwards.

It landed in the first ‘o’ of a ‘Lost Dog’ flyer.

It wasn’t like he was standing in front of the noticeboard; he didn’t have a straight shot, it was kinda curved. But he still hit his target.

In the end there wasn’t a fight. Clint threw six more darts, and hit perfectly every time. He got his money and was on his way to being a bar legend.

‘Just a beer, thanks Laura,’ he said, sighing as he hopped up onto a bar stool.

She’d have thought he’d be happy; he’d won a bet and was being talked about with awe and admiration in every corner of the bar.

Instead he just looked tired. He looked like a whole nother person to the smirking, joking man she was used to.

‘Something wrong?’ she asked.

He glanced at her, and she thought for sure he was gonna shrug it off, tell her to mind her own business.

‘I used to do this schtick - the trickshots - on stage. Guess all that,’ he waved at the noticeboard, at where he’d been standing, ‘kinda reminded me of that.’

‘I’d say just tell them no next time, but I guess the money kind of changes things, huh?’ she said.

He smiled and nodded.

‘Least I don’t have to wear a stupid costume when I do it here, though,’ he said.

‘Where exactly did you perform?’

‘Circus,’ he said, swallowing a mouthful of beer.

Laura was called away to serve someone else, so she had some time to process.

She’d never actually been to a circus - the one time one had come near they’d been broke. Laura knew better than to ask, because her mom would have tried to come up with the few dollars she’d need and no amount of transitory fun would be worth that.

But she had ideas of the circus, from books and movies. She’d read _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ from the library as a kid - mostly under her covers with a flashlight, a waste of batteries but worth it for her to finish the book before she had to return it. It had left a mark on her young psyche - really she should have stopped reading, but Laura was never one to leave a book unfinished. It was a good thing no more circuses had come their way, or Laura would have had nightmares the whole time.  
‘Circuses are creepy,’ she said, still half in her head.

He looked up at her and she realised she’d spoken out loud.

He smiled.

‘Yeah. They are.’

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
